Tools Featured in this Teardown

Video Overview

Learn how to repair your Nintendo Switch with this video overview.

Introduction

This Friday night is the moment you've all been waiting for: Nintento has finally launched its Zelda machine new console, the Nintendo Switch. Forget playing games for now, it's time to take a peek at the hardware. Let iFixit do the talking, and our tools will do the walking. Come tear down with us!

If we were to remove the back plate, what should we use to replace the purple compound used to transfer heat. Should we use typical CPU/GPU thermal paste such as Arctic Silver or is it even necessary to replace the compound?

@Ricardo - I’m no fan of having to tear it down a bit to replace the battery, but this is by no means having to “tear it down almost completely in order to replace it.” I mean dude, steps 1-5 of this tear down consist of looking at the device, identifying the ports, and removing a few screws. After the screws you just lift the metal shield and unplug your battery. Not exactly rocket science. Step 5 even says, “but once you're past them the back cover lifts off easily—no clips or adhesive” so this couldn’t possibly get any easier. In fact after I remove those tri-point screws, I’ll just replace them with normal screws for future ease.

my usb c port just gave up on me and nintendo say it's not covered under the warranty. … the switch has hardly left the dock! nintendo say 175 pounds to replace the port! looks like i need to find another option! like learn to solder!

There’s the connectivity issue! The series elements in the T-networks feeding the RF connectors are unpopulated, meaning the antennas aren’t connected. This is probably causing a 20dB-40dB hit in RF performance and decreasing battery life. If this is a production unit, Nintendo has a recall on their hands; software can’t fix that.

To be fair, there is a chance those series components have a tiny net tie across them, shorting them out. I can't tell from these photos. This would be cheaper than a jumper resistor, even at $0.001 each. They avoided slikscreen which does indicate they might be trying to aggressively keep PCB costs down. I wish I could get a closer look.

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Unlike a lot of modern touchscreen devices, the digitizer on the Switch is not fused to the display, meaning you can replace the two parts independently. Thanks for keeping repairability in mind Nintendo!

The digitizer is adhered by a double-sided adhesive strip that runs around the perimeter of the display. With a bit of heating and prying, we manage to coax the digitizer off.

But in all our excitement, our hasty teardowner severed the digitizer data cable. Fixers be warned, this book opens longways.

Might want to clarify that the Joy-Con charging grip does not have a battery so there is no boost from the grip itself. You have to plug the grip into a power source (through USB) to get the joy-cons to charge at all when they are attached to the charging grip. Otherwise the grip acts exactly like the included non-charging grip.

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There have been early rumors of durability problems with the rail mechanism for the Joy-Con units, so we pause for a closer look.

The rail itself, on the edge of the Switch Console, is metal and seems like it should hold up pretty well.

Its mate on the Joy-Con side is plastic, which is probably exactly what you want—any failure will most likely be in the detachable controller, which should be cheaper to repair or replace if necessary.

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The controllers shed their skin for a close-up comparison. We bring you, Red vs. Blue.

We aren't shallow—it's what's inside that counts. The red Joy-Con comes out ahead with IR hardware and an NFC antenna.

The IR hardware consists of an IR camera and four IR LEDs. Nintendo says that the camera can detect different hand shapes, distance, and in the future will be able to record video. As for the LEDs, our bet is that they cast IR light onto nearby objects to make them easier to identify.

You know what both have though? Two Phillips screws holding the joystick and two Phillips screws holding the board. That's what.

Blue, you are there for us repair folk when it counts.

On the bottom of each rests a hefty HD Rumble motor weighing in at 5.5 grams.

I had to send my Left Joy-Con for a repair on day one because the L button was acting erratically. I first noticed it when I tried to write my credit card number. I had made a mistake and tried to go back using tbe L button. When I pressed the button, my text cursor moved all the way to the left even though the button was in normal position (seemingly unpressed).

I wonder what caused this. Fun fact: Pressing the plastic piece between ZL and L button activated the sensor for L button.

two wires true, but magnets are magnetized diagonally and the W shape of the spring arms gives different spring rate in X and Y. Powered, the coil moved diagonally to the corner. Once let go, it occilates in different frequencies in X and Y.

But also let's not compare Apples and Oranges, ARM architecture needs much less RAM than x86 to perform well, you can't simply compare ARM, PowerPC and x86 with 4GB of RAM and think they will all have the same performance.

<<<But also let's not compare Apples and Oranges, ARM architecture needs much less RAM than x86 to perform well>>>

No it doesn't. That's just...not correct at all.

And yeah, Switch has 2x the RAM as Wii U, though who knows how much will be accessible by games. Obviously all consoles reserve some RAM, but for some reason the Wii U reserved half of it (though that still left more than 2x the RAM versus 360 and PS3, which is maybe why they didn't care that they were reserving so much).

I care a lot myself too. I would even like to know what spec version of the SD Association it supports. Does it only comply to version 3.01 (UHS-1) or could it comply to the new 5.1 version or even 6.0?

Do we know the thermal envelope of the cpu/gpu? I'm wondering if it's on the verge of needing a fan. If so, a die shrink version might not need the fan anymore freeing up a lot of space for a bigger battery.

Like the wiiU they know it's kinda a small amount but most people won't care at launch. I bet they even double it by xmas. Or make a more expensive version with the charging dock, 64 memory, and a Zelda or mario included. It will seem like a deal!

Jason, I'm assuming that you are wanting a video of the LRA in action as a static X-ray of the device would look pretty much like what the teardown looks like only with less color. There's an awful lot of metal there and it's just going to look like a dark block.

Actually, if you look at the X-ray of the system with attached controllers, you can easily make out the dark blocks that are the LRAs.

Let the time work. I think there will be cables to get the HDMI out of the USB C. In the past, for every console there was a lot of non Nintendo accessories from third-party. Why should it be other this time?

There are many YouTube vids trying out different USB-C 2 HDMI docs, but AFAIK there is noone which works until now.

I tested it myself with the Microsoft Display Dock for its latest Lumias, but it did not work. Hopefully there will be a solution soon as I use my switch docked at two different locations and do not want to pack the dock everytime.

It's USB-C on the console and the dock. Any USB-C charger should provide a charge - so if you had an international charger that supports USB-C you should be good. One of the photos shows 15V / 2.6A input on the dock and the same on the tablet itself.

The x-ray they show at the top shows the US-style prongs on the charger and those are sold supporting US voltage only with a built-in USB-C cable (i.e. the cable can't be unplugged and used on a different adapter)

Region free powersupply's are very common these days. They are cheap. Under 75W they are more cheaper, because in the EU you will need PFC over 75W. Active PFC is expensive, so a non region free supply will be get more benefit to the manufacturer @75W+.

So the charger of the Switch and every Phone are under 75W and can be build simply with an PSU driver chip and only a few more components. For every Voltage.

Although it is true that 100-240V power supplies are very common, previous Nintendo portables have been something of an outlier in this regard. The charger with my 3DSXL was 120 only, and that was 2012, years after 100-240 was standard elsewhere.

Wow, 16GB cartridges? That's pretty awesome! I loved back in the day when Nintendo Power would list cartridge sizes, just because I'm curious about stuff like that...wish I knew how big a given 3DS/DS/Vita game I'm playing was.

It would had been better if it was USB type-C 3.1 with Thunderbolt 3.0 for that purpose. Thunderbolt 3.0 is 8x faster than USB 3.0 and to act like a SLI eGPU, 5Gbps isn't enough for a considerable boost, if it was Thunderbolt 3.0 it would be much more future proof. Since it's just USB 3.0, I'm not sure if Nintendo is really thinking about an eGPU, which is a pity. But I hope someone with more knowledge could say what could Nintendo actually achieve with USB 3.0 regarding an extra graphics boost, I wonder if that would be enough for 4K in the future, but it doens't look like it.

You'll never get any form of functional dual GPU solution through USB - both bandwidth and latency are far too bad for that to be even remotely functional. Not going to happen.

And for those of you talking about Thunderbolt 3: TB3 is an Intel-developed tech. There's zero evidence of it even being considered for implementation outside of X86 systems. Heck, it doesn't even work on AMD-based systems, and those are X86! TB3 on ARM will never happen.

Thunderbolt is an Intel proprietary external PCIe port. Nvidia would need to develop their own proprietary external PCIe solution.

The Switch would also need extra hardware for this, mainly a couple more ICs.

But it could work since USB type C allows an extra set of data lanes to be used at a non-USB port, this is how the Switch outputs a MyDP signal (which the dock has a MyDP-HDMI converter). But currently, the Switch doesn't have supporting hardware for an external/hybrid gpu setup.

You could argue that's similar to a CPU integrated heat spreader, but those are more form fitting and sometimes soldered for better heat dissipation. Cooling setup seems like a not great design, especially as DF clocked the vent area at 52 degrees Celsius. From a mobile SoC.

SoC > thermal paste > the shield/cover around the SoC and nearby components > copper shim > thermal paste > pad >mounting bracket and copper pipe, with what looks to be a layer of material between the bracket and heatpipe; also can't tell if the bracket is brazed to the sides of the heat pipe, or if it's under the heat pipe > thermal paste > backplate.

Also keep in mind that the SoC has an internal heat spreader, with is either soldered or pasted to the chip itself. So there's even more interfaces.

I also wonder what effects that shield/cover on the SoC is going to have on the DRAM it covers when it heats up.

So there's 10+ parts on top of the silicon including the IHS and it's solder/paste, 9 if the mounting bracket is brazed to the sides of the heat pipe, 10 if the heat pipe is on top of the bracket. Keep in mind that a standard computer only has 4-5 layers on top of the silicon.

Can you give a close up and any part number on the usb port on the switch. I would love to know if that is an off the shelf part that I could get from digikey if need be. It appears to be a midmount design that I am familiar with(Molex I think), but I cant get a clear shot of it from your pictures

Kinda want to try swapping thermal paste with some Arctic Silver or something to see if it improves dissipation at all. Not sure that would aid performance but might be worth a go. Not really sure how I'd measure any impact though... Can't exactly monitor the Chip temp.

Update: according to a forum, the devkit switch has a 64GB chip, and people have already done mods to read and write the chip outside of the switch.

The only problem that might arise is the Samsung chip has 2bit MLC (Toshiba doesn't give that spec) on their 32GB chip in the Gamers Nexus' Switch, their largest 2bit MLC chip is 128GB, they offer a 256GB chip but that has a 3bit MLC.

There's hope for storage mods, and there's hopes for a larger storage switch.

Was the left Joy-Con's 4-button mechanism (circuit board & chassis) the same as the right Joy-Con's? I'm planning on modding a Joy-Con with a replacement (Sega Saturn) D-Pad, so I'd love to see more detail about the D buttons, for example, popping off the rubber buttons on the Joy-Con board and see what's underneath (something you could potentially solder to?). Thanks.

Hey there, I've managed to have something jam the USB-C port and it's mushed the end of the black pin connector. How feasible is it to bring the system to a local repair shop and have them replace the port for me? Am I out of luck and will have to send it in to Nintendo for repairs?

Patrick Frost and John Horne were asking question about the antenna or antennas. SamitSakar wrote an article on the users complaining about the weakness of WIFI. If the wiring is incorrect which Patrick Frost alluded to then how does it get resolved. Is there only one antenna or more. For example iphone has 9 antenna. Slide 11, Researching the Broadcom/Cypress BCM4356 features “Single-stream and dual-stream IEEE 802.11ac solution with data rates up to 433.3 and 866.7 Mb/s” Hence it’s not the chip but the antenna configuration. Perhaps there should be more. Any input? All ears?

Hello our son has inserted a Micro USB into the USB-C socket. Now the pins are bent and the Device cannot be loaded. Does anyone know where I can get a Nintendo USB 3.1 Type C jack to replace it or an alternative jack?

Can someone help me? On step 19 , there’s a flex cable coming out of the joycon where the LED is , mine is malfunctioning it doesn’t work properly , if I open the joycon and stretch the cable the led lights works normally , but when I fold it to close the joycon it stops working, I think the cable somehow is broken inside I dont know…but anyway , is there a place that I can buy only this part so I can replace it? I don’t even know the name of this cable ;(

Any clues on the model of the IR camera? I’m interested to know how sensitive it is, the Labo shows some interesting stuff, but it makes me wonder if it’s got a high enough resolution to read QR codes made up of reflective material.

Does anybody know if I can replace the c-stick sensors? I dont know if im using the correct word here, but mines pretty much messed up, i have two sets of joycons and only right ones broke twice, and I might be able to fix them by exchanging it.

Resources

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